We're tired of candidates at every level — local, state and national — being incredibly vague about what it takes to actually do real economic development.

The ABQ Free Press sent the eight mayoral candidates our third question in our rolling mayoral forum by email on Friday morning.

This question has to do with economic development, or the lack of it. The Albuquerque metro area still hasn’t reached its pre-recession jobs level. Our jobs peaked in February 2008, and again, we still haven’t regained all of those jobs.

So whatever the candidates say, or don’t say, about economic development is key to what could happen in the future. Will we continue to stagnate, or will we start growing again?

We asked the candidates two very specific questions about economic development because we think it’s essential that they actually know something about it. We’re tired of candidates at every level — local, state and national — being incredibly vague about what it takes to actually do real economic development. And we’re tired of candidates spouting “jobs, jobs and more jobs” without knowing anything about how to create them or bring them here.

And we’re tired of candidates who don’t know anything about economies and how they grow. There’s basically only one way to grow an economy. Now we’ll see if the candidates actually know how.

Here’s what we asked the candidates:

How many economic base jobs do we need to create over the next eight years in the Albuquerque metro area to get back to full employment?

What percentage of these new economic base jobs is needed to replace the jobs we’re losing to attrition, and what percentage is needed to support the new population growth you expect?

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